An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

SINCE religious systems, true and false, have one and
the same great and comprehensive subject-matter, they
necessarily interfere with one another as rivals, both in
those points in which they agree together, and in those
in which they differ. That Christianity on its rise was
in these circumstances of competition and controversy, is
sufficiently evident even from a foregoing Chapter: it
was surrounded by rites, sects, and philosophies, which
contemplated the same questions, sometimes advocated the
same truths, and in no slight degree wore the same external appearance. It could not stand still, it could not
take its own way, and let them take theirs: they came
across its path, and a conflict was inevitable. The very
nature of a true philosophy relatively to other systems is to
be polemical, eclectic, unitive : Christianity was polemical;
it could not but be eclectic; but was it also unitive?
Had it the power, while keeping its own identity, of
absorbing its antagonists, as Aaron's rod, according to St.
Jerome's illustration, devoured the rods of the sorcerers of
Egypt? Did it incorporate them into itself, or was it
dissolved into them ? Did it assimilate them into its own
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Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.comPublication information:
Book title: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.
Contributors: John Henry Newman - Author.
Publisher: Pickering.
Place of publication: London.
Publication year: 1878.
Page number: *.

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